DreamHost and Receiving Pingbacks

The explanation on how to use the Trackback tester is in fine print and hard to find. And a little hard to understand how it is supposed to work. Can you give a quick step by step so we can test our pings and trackbacks? Thanks.

I’m sorting that on the above link now.

Just login to the test page. Enter some simple text in the post entry, ie: “this tests trackback” for example.

Place the TB url from one of your blog entries in the correct box then and publish the entry.

Then check your entry to see if you received it.

Done.
I have the TB’s already, but no pings – that is almost certainly due to the build of 1.5.1 I have running.

On DH. Using Podz’s very useful test blog[1], my conclusion is that Pingbacks don’t get through, but Trackbacks work just fine. On my site, anyway.

[1] Thanks, Podz ??

Dreamhost has disabled fopen on their servers and several important parts of WP no longer work. We have been in contact with them about this and hope to have a fix in 1.5.1.

Dreamhost has disabled fopen on their servers and several important parts of WP no longer work.

Ouch ::faith in DreamHost dwindling:: Would you mind shedding some light on what those several important parts are? I may be able to find some work-arounds.

I’d find that helpful, too, Matt. I’ve been thinking that the only thing that could explain the variances in can/can’t send/receive pingbacks/trackbacks would be differences in server setup.

I’ve just tested my two 1.2 blogs; both send/receive PBs but don’t sendTBs (I *know* TB receive is working due to the TB spam I’d gotten earlier).

I’m off to check into fopen. FWIW, I’m at Verio (not Dreamhost) on a couple of virtual private servers.

Does anyone know whether pingback is as virtually accepted a technology as trackback? (That is, given that PBs/TBs are not blocked on specific blogs.)

Well, I can say that I’ve never been able to pingback any posts on MovableType blogs, PHPNuke, or Drupal. So, I’d say that while pingback is easier than trackback, trackback is more widely accepted.

Thanks, macmanx. Guess I was lucky early on in my blogging “career” that the few people I pingbacked happened to have WP. Guess I have some work cut out for me.

DianeV, can you confrm whether or not your host has allow_url_fopen() enabled?

Can I assume that this disabling of fopen in Dreamhost is also the reason my wordpress plugin manager 1.7 doesn’t work anymore? I get the message “remote file opening disable on this install of php.”

I also have a problem with pingbacks and the automatic update of wpblacklist.

Is the best solution just waiting for the release of 1.5.1? Has that been announced?

I’m on Dreamhost using their stock “one-click” installation of 1.5, so here’s another datapoint: Using the very useful test blog, I determined that I can successfully send both trackbacks and pingbacks, and I can receive trackbacks, but I can’t seem to receive pingbacks.

nscott, that is correct. I’ve lost my plugin manager, Amazon plugin, and a few other things. They say you can still use most things with curl (?) but I have no idea what that would entail. I’ve just switched to what I hope is a host that’s a bit better for me ??

“They say you can still use most things with curl (?) but I have no idea what that would entail”
It’ll mean you have to rewrite the components that use fopen to use curl instead. Only really a viable option for those who have some knowledge of php.